Watch: Sorry I Am — Del Water Gap

Originally a duo, musician S Holden Jaffe started Del Water Gap with Maggie Rogers when he was a student at NYU. As a solo artist, he has amassed a following and millions of streams on Spotify as well as featuring on Maggie Rogers’ 2020 album Notes from the Archive: Recordings 2011-2016.

Sorry I Am represents Jaffe’s debut release for Mom + Pop Music, and it comes with a brooding video filmed in the Californian desert.

The song itself shimmers with a dream-like intensity and a heartfelt urgency. Jaffe’s confessional vocals gradually surrounded in the kind of increasingly complex instrumentation that feels like the emotional clouds that exist in my mind. Every so often you identify a small kernel of emotion, but the more you focus on that emotion, the more it grows. That’s what Sorry I Am feels like — a person whose emotional experience expands from the periphery into an overwhelming, insistent and overwhelming wall of feeling.

Check out Sorry I Am below:

Listen: I Don’t Wanna Be Alone — Bjorn Rydhog

Malmö–based Swedish musician Bjorn Rydhog first unveiled his music two years ago with the release of his debut EP, There’s A Light In Everything. Since the release of that EP, his focus has been on creating uplifting music to soundtrack everyday lives.

Here on I Don’t Want To Be Alone, Rydhog takes inspiration from M83 and The Weeknd, creating a sound that blends crisp modern lines with a retro cinematic sound. The use of a broken beat gives the song a sense of movement and life that appeals to me. The vocal melody itself is somewhat sombre and introspective, but that rhythm grants the piece a more hopeful feel. The repeated line of “I don’t wanna be alone again” is somehow transformed from a something that could have been filled with passive longing into something much more actively chosen: I choose not to be alone any more.

Having worked on the song together with producer Johan Sigerud (JRSS) and co-writer Olof Gråhamn, Bjorn describes the inspiration behind the song:

“I Don’t Wanna Be Alone shows an electronic direction I’m currently exploring. The tracks of the song were recorded separately at our different homes. I guess the creation process, as well as the theme of the song, reflect the distant and lonely, but also creative times we currently live in.”

Check out I Don’t Wanna Be Alone below:

Premiere: Sun Hands — SANTO + the PPL

This one’s a trip.

Talking about his experience of being an aspiring young musician, SANTO has a way of delivering stories with a sense of wistful romance. Putting us in the shoes of someone confronted with the kinds of opportunities they just don’t know how to respond to, he starts:

“I was in Washington Square Park with my songwriting partner and best friend, busking, playing Beatles songs when a woman and some dudes in leather jackets and sunglasses walked up. She told us she liked our sound, our voices, and she wanted us to perform at her ‘fashion event.’ We were stoned, 16 years old, and had no idea what she was talking about. She gave us a card and walked away. We realized we were just talking with Blondie and she was talking about NYC Fashion Week.”

Kicked out from Selena Gomez’s degassing room, pursued by Disney and then seeing their music video shared by Wiz Khalifa, our artist subsequently moved to Nashville as a part-time studio assistant and farmhand. Yep, farmhand. Road trips, encounters with Ben Folds and Steven Tyler and transcendental experiences in the Grand Canyon follow. Eventually, our artist settles in Utah. It is here that SANTO fully emerges.

Deliberately eclectic in terms of influences, SANTO + the PPL channel their sound from rock, grunge, and pop but also jazz and hip-hop. What struck me with Sun Hands is its dizzy lethargy, evoking the feeling of being a little too hot and too high to move… Warm days spent too comfortable to actually achieve much beyond existing. Jazzy keys twinkle as the lyrics tell the tale of the tug-of-war between mental distraction and presence:

“Sun Hands is inspired by these walks and adventures around Pittsburgh getting lost with my girlfriend and my dog on these backroads, and side streets. I’m distracted, or I'm caught up in my head, I'm venting to her about something and she grabs my hands, and that warmth from her hands in the sun… the way the light comes through the trees and illuminates the city… it brings me back.”

Sun Hands’ production conveys a beautiful sense of chaos and texture, but also place. I can feel the myriad of thoughts, the cacophony of distractions. But I also sense the warmth of another, and the feel of the sun. Nothing emphasises the importance of being present quite like the realisation that we only get this moment with this person once.

Check out Sun Hands below, or find it on Spotify and Apple Music. For the latest news, check out SANTO + the PPL's official site.

SANTO + the PPL · SUN HANDS

Listen: Rabbit Hole (Love Is What You Make It) — Billy Vena

Rabbit Hole shows up with the kind of inclusive approach to aesthetics that recalls Prince. In the first 30 seconds we get an a cappella intro, radio static, grungy bass and soulful R&B vocals, yet they all come together in a way that feels coherent. What struck me with Rabbit Hole is the way Billy Vena has cherry-picked sounds from the past three decades and combined them in a way that feels distinctive and fresh… I find myself longing for more of the roughly hewn soul of En Vogue, Lucy Pearl and Miguel — all artists who carved their sound out of a composite blend of genres and artists, forming something infectious and near-universally appealing.

This stylistic approach is clearly no accident. Billy Vena acknowledges an aspiration to share his love of pop culture by channeling the lessons of the greatest pop stars of all time. By doing this, he hopes to create music fused into something both new and classic. Having made his debut in 2020 with Space Hippie, quickly followed with Disco Maniac and Talking 2 Myself, the Panama-native but Texas-resident musician has already found exposure through Spotify Fresh Finds and a Hype Machine #1.

Rabbit Hole is Vena’s first release of 2021, and with it he hopes to challenge notions of toxic masculinity, opening up a dialogue around sexual expression and exploration. In his words, Billy explains:

“Rabbit Hole is about a sexual awakening and how confusing it can be when you realize it’s happening. I wasn’t necessarily writing about my teenage rejections but my teenage regrets and how the back and forths in my head kept me in a “what if” scenario till this day. We may never know what the other person truly feels but maybe love is what you make it.”

Check out Rabbit Hole below:

fanlink.to/loveiswhatyoumakeit

Listen: 92 — Matti Roots

Matti Roots is a multi-disciplinarian, with experience and talents spanning production, songwriting, performance as well as being a label owner and educator. Having first started exploring music with the piano at as young as three and saxophone at seven, he went on to attend the Royal Academy of Music’s junior school aged just 13.

With a career that takes in So Solid and Miss Dynamite, Def Jam and Jaguar Skills alongside work within the ad industry, Matti’s career demonstrates the impact of that talent. Since the pandemic hit, he has used his free time to work on a catalogue of new solo material, with notable releases in Right There and Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye.

92 is Matti Roots’ first release of 2021, and it instantly hits the ground running — an infectious keyboard refrain propelling a sharp drum beat that has the feel of feet slapping on the pavement. There is an effervescent atmosphere to 92 — a song about that someone who you don’t just want now, but always… “Until we’re 92”. I love the unbridled joy and positivity on display here — the optimism on display in the lyrics perfectly reflected in the crisp modernism of a production style that evokes something like Joe Jackson’s Steppin’ Out, only dressed in a crisp new suit.

Release date 12.04.2021Stream on Spotifycopen.spotify.com/track/26etk4r72BicWxrPNGIPK6?si=-kYmxvSeRqqQveVmclGTmwFollow on Instahttps://www.instagram.com/matt...